A PAINTING OF RUDDY AND MOSS-GREEN HUES
DISCLAIMER: I don't own them, Joss does. Please don't sue.
SUMMARY: Set during "Graduation (Part 2)". Faith's spirit never entered Buffy's dreams to forgive her and give her strength, so Buffy's spirit must do a little visiting of its own.
PAIRINGS: Faith/Buffy, Buffy/Angel.
RATING: PG-13 (look mummy, I can write something a kiddie could read! Now, whether they'd want to is another matter entirely…)
ARCHIVE: Wherever, just let me know first please.
FEEDBACK: always welcome.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Heavy references to "Three Women" by Sylvia Plath (which I have just produced… will I stop mentioning this soon? Not a chance!). Dark subject matter, biblical and mythological references (although nothing too heavy), random wanderings of a mind that's sleep deprived and high on cold medicine at 5am. Fair warning. DARKFIC. The 'hour of the wolf' is a reference to a God-forsaken hour of the morning, 3am if I remember correctly.
Her hair is so very dark. Black against the flat whiteness of the hospital pillow, and it seems to me that her eyes would be as black and as opulent if only they would open - but they do not.
Her eyes are closed, but mine are open - open shrieks if eyes could shriek… but they cannot. And so I sit here at her bedside, eyes open, shrieking and bright, and do not voice the screams that my mouth longs for. No - I am silent as the bubbling brook, wiping away tears unnoticed.
The bruises on her face are still there - still green. My knuckles throb in empathy, and some small part of me notices that the cut on her cheek has healed. It is a dark ruddy red - a scab, healing tissue over the torn skin. Soon, that will fall away to the pale paper-thinness of scar skin. I find myself regretting the pale scar skin, but not the ruddy hard skin on her face that comes before it - that skin is tough and hard and protects her against harm.
It seems silly to me that ruddy red tissue forms over already damaged skin, when it is of no use at all. Surely we would need it before we are injured?
An image -
Naked people, their skins tough, diamond-hard and ruddy with dried blood, walking on blistered feet.
Perhaps not. Nature has her reasons.
And so I watch the play of fear on her sleeping face, and wonder when the diamond-hard skin will fall away to reveal the pale delicate girl underneath. I already see parts of her, glimpsing her beneath the green. She is weeping.
I cannot bring myself to feel sorry for her here. Not after what she has done - not after what I have done. What I can be sure is me, in any case. It does not sound like me, after all, and how could I be sure that it is me? Perhaps I only think that it is me because I cannot face the possibility that I have lost something irreplaceable in my sleep… something my sleeping child cannot return to me. And nor, I suspect, does she wish to. She is angry - with me, with herself… perhaps with everyone. Why would she wish to expose the soft scar tissue earlier than she has to? Best keep the ruddy cover for protection, cowering underneath it until the green moss ebbs away - washed away by a tide of regretful tears.
Yet I do not feel regret.
Faith, my Faith… so named, and yet you have taken something precious away from me, and I do not know what. I feel empty inside, and I wonder when I will wake up - I wonder when you will wake up. The doctors look worried, so I must add, 'if ever', but I know that you will. Soon, I hope. Later, I expect. The ruddy skin on your face is still there, as is the green moss of my knuckle marks. I cannot see your belly, and nor do I wish to, because I know the shape of the wound in it - I know where I tore it loose. I know where the blade slid in, and I know where I ripped it back out, taking your lifeblood along with it. It is a beautiful blade, my dear - you cannot draw it without drawing blood, after all.
If I close my eyes, I can just see your smile, hidden under layers of skin and moss, waiting for the river to wash it clean. It hurts, because I know that there is no one here to weep for you, Faith, apart from him whom we should most revile, but you do not. He will not return here; I will make sure of that. And then who shall visit you at night, when all the nurses are about their business? Who should push back a strand of your hair and marvel at its darkness? Not him. And not I.
I loved you once; this I admit freely. Perhaps I still love you, but that is something not as freely admitted. It is curious that I can admit to loving only those not around me - and you, my dear, are most certainly not around me. Look at you! Tied down to a bed like a wild beast. Perhaps those nurses know you better than I thought.
I think I shall have the restraints removed. I may pose as your sister, or your cousin… your nearest relative, in any case. In any sense of the word, that is true. We fought together, against common enemies and against each other. We loved together - perhaps even the different sides of the same man, although I wonder if it is in the same way. One thing I am sure of - you did love me. And I loved you.
Didn't I?
River bubbles over the green moss, and I push more of your dark hair back. I go unnoticed by all that walk past, because I wish it. I do not need their comments or their judgements. I think that my own judgements are frightening enough all on their own.
I did love you Faith, didn't I? Not as perhaps a sister, for one forgives the transgressions of siblings. One tries to make amends - to save the other from darkness - even if it costs one's own life. And one…
One is perhaps incredibly pompous to talk in the third person.
Must be something I picked up off Giles.
I will go and find him soon. I will go and find him and make sure that he is all right. I will find Willow and Xander and make sure that they are all right. I will call my mom, and tell her that I am alive. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen, of course, but I shall try. I shall find my former lover - much as I have found you, love - and take my goodbyes of him. Or perhaps he shall take his of me; it does not matter much. We shall both suffer greatly for this separation, and neither of us will bear to see each other again.
That is, of course, assuming we survive my picking up your knife, love, afterwards, and walking out into the light. Morning will be bright, and the sun shall shine until it is swallowed by a dragon. He who must be reviled shall reveal his true form, or perhaps achieve it for the first time. And I…
I, doing what I must, shall take the same knife I plunged into you, and plunge it into his belly too. Perhaps I shall be able to tear it asunder before he rips me into shreds; perhaps not. It does not much matter now. Nothing much matters now.
It is the hour of the wolf, and soon morning shall come. Soon, I must awaken and leave your bedside. After thinking on this, I have decided that I didn't love you, dear. How could I? We are too different. You are dark, and I am light. You are angry, and I shall soon be at peace. You are a landscape for moss and red diamonds and the ghost of rivers, and I…. I do not know what I am, except perhaps a remnant of something that never was. That was never meant to be.
Must you really be so angry?
I lied, my dear. I do love you.
You believe me, don't you? I don't have anything else to say, and I certainly don't have anyone else to say it to.
I know that I am inconstant. I do not stay true to what I decide, but the moon is high tonight… it pulls me with its faces, and I cannot help but follow. I am tied to it, like you, and I must obey its call, as you must. When it cries out for blood, I must listen.
The moon wept and screamed this night, Faith, my Faith. It reviled he who must be reviled, and spoke to me of goodness and truth and those who must be destroyed. And so I took your knife and plunged it into your belly, and knew that you would have done the same to me if you could have. Does that make me better - or simply stronger? I cannot know anymore. When I wake, I will know again. All I knew was the moon crying faintly in my ears, and I watched you listen to it too.
Diana is a fickle mistress, crying out to many of her maidens - most of who are maidens no more.
I remember the first night we made love. I know that you do not recall it, because that is not what you would call making love. We did not touch… we did not speak. We simply watched the moon after the hunt and listened to her sated sighs.
Slaves to her whims were we, and slaves we remain. The moon shall swallow the sun, and darkness will fall, so we must turn, one against the other, and eat spiders and other frightening things in ancient rituals of darkness. Or was that something only done by him who must be reviled?
I still will not speak his name. He makes me jealous - him, with his maleness, so easily suppressed into a false parental feeling, so artificial and untrue. I wondered why you were drawn to him, until saw his polar opposite. He really was as pleasant as Giles was cutting, wasn't he? The father figure both of us wanted and neither needed. It brings us such suffering, Faith, my Faith. It brings us such sorrow, for Diana does not approve. Yet we cling to them, these figures of maleness, as if we needed maleness in our lives. As if we needed parents! What are parents to us now? The moon calls, and we respond. There is no more.
I do perhaps think that the best of me really has died. I do not recall ever thinking on this before. I do not recall ever hearing my own heart from across the ward, but I hear it, yes. My lover drank too deep from me, I think, and there is not enough lifeblood left in me to keep me - just as there is not enough in you to keep you. Instead, a landscape for a face, a rocky plain for a body, you are a canvas for my rage. I do not look towards my own body, for I fear that I shall find a similar fate there.
I will not look, and if I do not look, it will not be true.
I loved you once, Faith, my Faith. Perhaps I still love you. But it is too late to find out, for we are too much alike. Tic and toc, and I hear the slow beat grow slower still. Alarms ring and nurses scuttle to and fro, as if they are white insects with canvas wings. Tremors shake the body I know to be lying near, but I cannot look at it. There is no appeal for me there, for the moon beckons.
Perhaps I shall I not see Giles or Willow or Xander or my mother. Perhaps I shall not bid goodbye to my lover. Perhaps I shall simply sit here with you, Faith, my Faith, until he who must be reviled swallows the sun and the moon bleeds. I think that it will be good for her - after all, we have bled often enough in her name.
You bleed still, I think, on the inside. The doctors cannot stop it - it's like a tap that cannot be shut off. Someone must reach inside and turn off the faucet… I consider doing it, then shrug the feeling off. You would not do the same for me, and there is no reason why I should save you. The something missing from me makes me smile… for once I would have. But love breeds love, and bitterness breeds hate. I think you have been bitter for far too long, and poison has sprung from your hate.
Faith, my Faith… there is a wailing in the background, the curious hum of insects scurrying about as multitudes of people I no longer recognise begin to weep. I wonder if I should know them - the man with the gaunt face and the glasses in his pocket, the girl with the red hair and tears in her eyes, the boy with the dark eyes, and the man with the even darker ones who stays outside and weeps… No, I do not know them. I know only you, and it is not frightening in the least. You are like me, after all. What I am I no longer remember, but it is comforting to know that I am no longer alone. Faith, my Faith…. We are more alike than I would have liked.
Your body is a canvas, and I have drawn such terrible destruction on it that it shall be remembered in years to come. My body is forgotten, sacrificed to some dark god or angel that no longer matters here, in the hour of the wolf. And so, like you, I, too, create corpses.
Far off, the moon continues to weep her forgotten tears. Faith, my Faith…
I, too, create. And that's the whole point…
Isn't it?
fin